Learn how the E-N crime team does their jobs and read about the quirky characters they encounter and the sometimes bizarre things that can happen at a crime scene that don't make it into their stories.

Tales from 315 Northtrail

Theresa Brown, photographed in 1983 after missing a court date. She was en route to Hollywood. Express-News file photo.

I finished writing my story on Theresa Brown last week, but the emails and phone calls of readers wanting to share tales about the late madam continue.

The Express-News maintains extensive clips files on most subjects, and I imagine the one we had on the madam who was arrested when her North Side brothel was busted, and her “trick list” with 3,000 names on it was confiscated, in October 1980 was pretty thick. At that time, there were two newspapers in town, and the story was covered thoroughly by reporters from the San Antonio Express and News, and the San Antonio Light.

But I’d have to imagine, since the clips file was checked out in 2007 and was never returned. Thankfully, there were many people still around to help me fill in the blanks.

There was one story about a prominent lawyer who called a newspaper reporter after Brown’s arrest and said he could prove that the cops knew about the bordello long before the bust. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the lawyer said he’d spent the night at Brown’s brothel at 315 Northtrail Drive after a few too many drinks once. When he got home the next day, he realized he was missing his Rolex, and he called Brown.

The two cursed each other out, the story goes, and then the man filed a report with the San Antonio police. A reporter retrieved the report, and remembers that “it was very clear from the report that the officer knew that it was that type of establishment.”

One reader reported that in the mid-‘70s, she and her small child had just moved to town when she heard “a terrible racket” outside of her apartment. She went outside, saw two men beating her next-door neighbor, a new mother, and called 9-1-1. The woman said the men left before police arrived, but she was able to identify one of the alleged assailants as Cecil Brown, Theresa’s late husband. He was arrested and was bailed out by his wife, the woman said.

Weeks later, the woman who’d witnessed the assault said she received death threats and a brick was thrown through her son’s window. She sought, and received, police protection, she said, including one officer whom she’d later marry.
Even the newspapers were involved in Brown’s tangled web. Lore has it that at the time, the Associated Press would move a daily bikini picture on the wire, and a News photographer who had connections to Brown localized the “girl in the news” feature with a daily photo of a San Antonio girl.

Unbeknownst to the paper’s management, one designated day each week featured Theresa Brown’s newest employee, and the photographer was fired after The Light broke news of the scandal.